JAGUAR Project
- The Project
-
Welcome to the website of the JAGUAR Project!
- Sustainable futures for cultural landscapes of JApan and Germany - biodiversity and ecosystem services as Unifying concepts for the management of Agricultural Regions -
we develop strategies for the sustainable use of landscapes that are managed to meet the diverse needs of human societies.
Cultural landscapes have showed contrasting trends over the past years, especially in industrialized countries like Germany and Japan. On the one hand, land use ceases in areas where former management practices have become uneconomical, while on the other hand land use is intensified in areas where conditions are conducive to large-scale operations. Both trends can counteract efforts to achieve sustainable use of cultural landscapes that takes into account their different functions such as water purification, food production, and recreational space.
Two key concepts are integrated for the development of new strategies for sustainable land use in Germany and Japan which represent complex interaction networks in the environment: biological diversity and ecosystem services. These interactions are formally expressed in computer-based models. At the same time, scenarios of future land use change are developed in close collaboration with the administration and land users in order to analyze and discuss the consequences of land use decisions.
